


twice as good to get half as far

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Feminism, Self-Indulgent, author uses too many em-dashes, characters are out of character, don’t ask me to explain there is no explanation, it’s a character flaw, squire brienne, who cares at this point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:35:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25246255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Brienne is a bit old to be a squire, but since when does anything make sense in Westeros?
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 29
Kudos: 153





	twice as good to get half as far

**Author's Note:**

> written May 20-July 11, 2020.
> 
> “threshing” was done (in the medieval Europe-type time frame of ASOIAF) by taking a flail — two pieces of wood joined by a leather hinge — and beating the crap out of hay, until it separates into straw and seed.  
> the flail hitting the grass makes a very distinctive thwap noise that also sounds a lot like a person being hit.

Step, step — parry — thrust — 

“Watch your left side.” 

Step, swing and parry, thrust and parry, step — “Your arm is low again. Pick it up.”

Parry again, harder now, and gods but the wench was strong; he made a clumsy step back to hold her off and still keep himself upright.

Her left hand reached out towards nothing. “Arm!” he snapped, irritated now. “Hold it at your side if you can’t fucking stand properly—“

She shifted then, too fast for him to compensate for, and caught his forward leg with her foot: and Jaime went down.

His squire was duly guilty. “Ser, I didn’t mean ...”

“You did well. Don’t apologize for besting a man.”

“Yes, ser.”

They washed faces and hands at the trough. Brienne scrubbed her face neatly, like a cat; but Jaime rubbed a handful of water into his scalp, letting it sluice through his hair and down his neck while he continued the lesson. “You’ll lose a hand if you wave it about like that in battle. Keep it tight to your body, if you haven’t got a shield.”

“I do that to help me balance.”

“Balance from the center. That arm, the way you drop your shoulder, it leaves your entire side open and takes strength from your sword.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Do you see?”

“Yes,” Brienne said again: and he thought that she did.

The only really good thing about being a knight (Jaime thought) was that someone else was always around to take off his armor. 

— Not that they were armored, for sparring. But the wool and leather padding was nearly as heavy and absolutely as uncomfortable as armor, and it stank of mud and sweat — and the odor had Jaime suspecting that some of the mud he’d fallen into was actually horse.

Brienne seemed to think so, too. Her face was tight as she unbuckled him and set the pieces aside to be cleaned.

But no; she was worried. He narrowed his eyes at her. “What is it?”

His squire took her time in answering, that was her way, so he was still waiting when she finally said: “I’ll never be good enough to be a knight.”

“There are no woman knights. Lady-knights.”

“I know.”

He rubbed his chin. “You would have to be twice as good as a man, to ...”

“I know, ser.”

Her tone said to drop it; her hands methodically worked at his graeves, unbuckling the straps from around his thighs. 

They must have been tired, those hands. Holding a sword for hours was no easy task, and her fingers were swollen and thick ... “You’re already good enough to be knighted,” he said. He watched her start; he saw the tension. “If you were a man,” he said.

“If I were a man,” she said. 

There wasn’t anything much to be done about that, but — “Clean those properly, will you? and I’ll order a bath for you, afterwards.”

She raised her chin. “Squires bathe in the river.”

”My squire bathes where I tell her to bathe,” said Jaime, “and when I tell her to do it, and for how long.”

She ducked her head. “I’ll clean these now.”

“You will,” he agreed. “And hurry with it.”

He lay in bed, woken by some sound that rattled through his soft dreams and left him alone and hard and irritable. He hadn’t been alone a moment before, he was sure of it. There was some woman with him, long-limbed and bare and smelling of dirt. 

Someone ...

Someone was threshing hay outside.

Threshing in the moonlight? But there it was, he clearly heard the rhythmic thump thump, a heavy noise, and a faint “ugh!” of exertion —

Or pain.

He found a nightrobe and his boots and flew down the halls, startling servants on their rounds, hoping to make it there fast enough — until he made it — 

And there was only only figure in the practice yard, after all, hitting a straw-stuffed dummy so hard that she grunted aloud with every stroke.

Jaime waited for his breath to catch and his fury to subside; then he called out — “Is your room insufficient, squire, that you come here for comfort?”

She jerked back a step, swinging out the sword like it was steel and not wood —  saw him — and lowered it. “Ser Jaime.”

“You woke me.”

“My apologies.”

“It is past midnight.”

“Yes. I know. It’s only ...”

“What?” he said.

“I don’t get in enough practice. I need —“

“You need to rest. It is either very late or very early, you woke me from my bed and we should both be in it — in our own, I mean.”

Moonlight flattened colors and stole definiton; it did not allow him to see if she blushed. “I need to work harder.”

“Twice as good,” Jaime said. “And even then, they’ll lie about you. Put that practice sword away, now. We’ll go together. I don’t trust you to go there alone.”

Exhaustion was visible in her back, her shoulders, her walk. And for what?

He said: “What do you do it for?”

“Would you give it up, were you a woman?”

That wasn’t a choice he had ever needed to consider. “If I were a woman ...” They were walking through the long hall now, keeping pace. If he were a woman: what then? “You’d be one of the finest knights in the kingdoms, were you a man.”

“Instead of that, I’m a perpetual squire,” said Brienne — and stopped herself at once. “Ser, I beg your pardon. It’s an honor to me to squire for you.”

“I know how you feel about it.”

“I don’t want you to think —“

“You’re allowed to be angry.” Was the walk to the White Tower ever this long? He rubbed his jaw, where the pebble of new beard was coming in. “I would knight you myself, if ...”

“It would cause talk.”

“There will always be talk about you. Brienne, I came down tonight because I heard a sound in my dreams and thought that someone was being — hurt.”

“I am fine, as you see.”

“Someone will hurt you,” he said, stopping where he stood so she would stop too, facing across from her in the darkness. His eyes were adjusted now; he could see her eyes, her nose, her mouth. “Do you understand me?”

“I am no weak, ignorant child. I can protect myself.”

“You are not weak. I am not calling you weak. This is not a question of capability. Against one you would win, maybe even against two. What if there are four, or five?”

She set her jaw. “If this is a threat to make me give up and go home, you are wasting your breath, ser. It will not work. Women are raped in their houses and gardens and in the marriage bed. No place is safe in the world.”

“As my squire, there is some protection,” said Jaime. “Knighthood would put more of a target on you than there is already, no matter how much you deserve it—“

“You would hold me back from an honor because it might bring a risk? What right do you have to decide what chances I take?” She laughed, short and harsh. “You wouldn’t know how to help me from the dangers. You don’t even know what they are.”

If she had slapped him, Jaime would not have been so shocked. He could not find a word of reply or argument; he only watched as Brienne turned and continued to her room.

He was eating slow, not thinking of much of anything, when Brienne sat down next to him.

“Ser Jaime.”

So she was still angry. He hadn’t expected different. And yet —

“Before you begin,” she said, “I have an idea.”

“Do go on.”

“Three out of five,” she said. “If I best you, you’ll knight me. And if you win —“

“You stay my squire?”

She shrugged. “That’s one option.”

“What else is there?”

“I might leave.“

He shifted back on his seat and eyed her. “You would not.”

“I could find another knight willing to take me on.”

He made a soft noise of protest. But how foolish was that? She is not your posession, fool.

He did not want her to be. But —

She was eating methodically, not looking at Jaime. And what choice did he have?

“Very well,” he said. “This afternoon.”

“True swords?” said Brienne.

He wanted to deny her this just because she’d asked. “Fine,” he said. “But if I lose a hand to your sword, I know who to blame.”

“You’d do well to be careful, then,” she said: and smiled like one who knew she would win the bet.

She lost.

They stared at each other across the half-trampled dirt of the field: and then Brienne broke away, retreating.

She left her sword on the ground. That was more unsettling than — “Brienne!” — that was worse even than the glint of something in her eyes that might have been the start tears. 

It might have been sweat. She was breathing hard, redfaced and loud. Gods, the sight of her fighting was enough to remind him of all the reasons he’d become a knight in the first place, all the reasons ...

He ordered a bath for his room and one for hers, thinking _Squires bathe in the river_ , thinking of her hands unbuckling his leather armor that day. 

Her anger every day.

She would not have wanted him to treat her easily.

The reason he became a knight was easy to say and impossible to explain: He wanted to do it.

When enough time had passed that she would be decent from her bath, and not so much time that a visit would be indecently late, he knocked on her door.

Brienne answered without dawdling.

“You’re awake,” he said. “You were not at supper, I thought that you — I did not think you would be packing.”

“Tarth,” she said. “I am going home to Tarth. My father ...”

“Because I fought better than you today? Winning a spar is half chance, you know that. You can fail because your foot catches the dew on the grass in a certain way. It’s not all skill and effort.”

“I could have done with the luck on my side,” she said.

“I will knight you,” said Jaime. “Is that enough to have you stay?”

“As a sop to my pride? Thank you, ser, but no.”

“Whose pride is served by running home? Brienne, when they speak of the first lady-knight they will not say She was only knighted out of pity. They will say that she was too good to deny.”

She pushed hair out of her forehead and he realized how furious she was. Angry with him? Yes: and with herself. “You’d call me a lady-knight — giving me an honor and withholding it in the same sentence.”

“There’s no shame in being a woman.”

“Yet you do not call yourself a man-knight, do you?”

If they were at spar again, Jaime could beat her to the ground and not feel sorry for it. “Fine,” he said. “Go to Tarth. Go find some useless excuse of a hedge knight to knock his sword on your shoulders and —“

“I am going to be married,” she said.

And Jaime sat down hard. He had no response to that, even as she cleared her throat, returning to packing her few things. She was refusing to look at him, he realized.

She said “I promised that to my father. If I could not be ... if I was not good enough, I would return home. I have duty there. Some men would marry me, —“ She stopped. “Many men would marry the heir to Evenfall, regardless of who it was under the cloak. I have a duty to my father. He honored his part of the promise, and I ...”

She was babbling.

“I will knight you,” said Jaime. “Whether or not you stay.”

She wiped at her eyes, and that was not sweat on her hand. “It isn’t necessary.”

“I did not come here to tell you that. I came to ask — to say — before you leave —“

She waited, one hand on the table.

Jaime said: “Spend the night with me.”

She opened her mouth to reply — to argue — and he spoke faster.

“Not to be knighted — I’ll do that even if you throw your trunk at my head and bar the door with me outside it. Not because you’re leaving, or because you’ll be married, or because you owe me anything — not for whatever dark reason is clouding your face, Brienne —“

Her voice shook. “Why do you ask? If it isn’t cruelty and it isn’t a ... tit for tat.”

“Can’t you think of any other possibility?”

They were silent, and watched the other.

“Not for me,” she said at last. “Not for me and not from you.”

“I — I would write your father for your hand, if I thought we would suit, if I did not think you deserve better. But we would always be at odds and ends. You have no patience with my nonsense —“

“You are nothing but nonsense,” said Brienne.

“— and I — Yes. Well, yes.” And Jaime crossed the room, and sat on the bed. “If you have some ridiculous moral determination to give your maidenhead to your husband, I will come to Tarth after your marriage and —“

“Gods, Jaime.” 

“I want you,” he said. “In whatever way I can have you. I want your legs around my hips, I want your breath gasping out in my ear, I want my face between your thighs and wet with your need. I want my hands on your breasts and your mouth on my —“

“Jaime!”

“I didn’t say it,” he said. “I won’t say it, if you don’t want me to. But I won’t stop wanting you.”

She shook her head.

“Brienne,” he said. “It isn’t a lie.”

“You sent the bath up to my room,” she said. “Why would you do that?”

“To ... because you were — we were tired, and, and —“

“Not to catch me here in it?”

“It’s been half the day since we sparred. I had plenty of time to look at you unclothed if I wanted to — cheat.”

She turned from him, walking away and then walking back. “I don’t understand any of this.”

Jaime said, to his boots: “If I wanted to hurt you, I’ve had enough of a chance.”

“I don’t think you want to hurt me.” And she sat down next to him on the bed. 

She moved as if her bones were heavy.

They did not look at each other; perhaps they looked at the same part of the floorboards.

“You would follow me to Tarth?”

“I would.”

“You’d ask me to betray my husband and my family and my vows, to bed you?”

Gods help him. “Yes.”

“And,” she said, raising her head, “you’d expect me to give up all that for you.”

“I don’t _expect_ —“

“What would you give up for me?”

“The hope of ever loving anyone else,” said Jaime.

Brienne took his hand. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “But I trust you.”

Her eyes were so clear.

And Jaime couldn’t bear to hold himself back any more from kissing her: so he didn’t bother.

**Author's Note:**

> there’s no justification for this. i am sorry


End file.
